Blue-skying petroleum’s future

Felix Kramer, founder of the California Cars Initiative, was a keynoter at a recent Houston energy conference sponsored by Rice University’s Baker Institute and ConocoPhillips. Here is the message he wanted to send to the petroleum industry.

As Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” Can you picture a world where fossil fuels are the last resort, not the first? If anyone can think big, it’s Texans. What if Houston’s corporate HQs and its giant port found their way to a new winning streak?

After eight years in which CalCars.org and our partners put plug-in hybrids on the map — and soon into dealer showrooms near you — I’m looking up for the Next Big Thing. As a serial entrepreneur, as I blue-sky, I’m thinking optimistically about the actual blue sky we look up at — the one that brings out the best in every shade of green we see.

I’m as conservative as they come about our sky. How about you? Just as scientists know that the sky is blue because light scatters when it hits oxygen and nitrogen, they also recognize just how poisoned air can threaten our way of life — perhaps even human existence itself. That’s why so many government and business leaders convened September 27 to talk about “Energy Market Consequences of an Emerging U.S. Carbon Management Policy.”

That’s why I’ve made it my business to take on a daunting goal. I work to reduce greenhouse gases 80% by 2050. Some countries and industries — and lots of smart money — are embracing this challenge. But more still look the other way. That’s short-sighted. Besides the impacts of climate change, these days we have so many reasons to redefine business as usual. Do you really like spending over a billion dollars a day on imported oil? We get our oil and natural gas from deep and remote underground sources. But as we’ve seen from our beloved Gulf Coast to the Marcellus Shale Formation, can we ever fully protect against all the risks? And do we have the vast amounts of water and other resources to divert to extract those fuels? How much fun will it be to fall far behind Asia and Europe as they reinvent economic growth around efficiency, cleantech, and renewable energy — while we’re stuck like fossils in a second-rate backwater?

Every day I work hard to move us towards a low-carbon world, just 40 years out. The low-hanging fruit — ending our addiction to oil for transportation — could be our generation’s triumph. Right after Pearl Harbor, Americans stopped making cars and trucks and built planes and tanks faster than anyone thought possible. Now it’s our turn to retool and recharge.

My family will be among the first to reload and refuel, replacing our two cars with a Chevy Volt and a Nissan Leaf . I’m delighted we’ll have a million plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles on U.S. roads within five years. But even if they penetrate the market at lightning speed — 10 times faster than hybrids sold in the last decade — in 15 years, plug-ins will still be less than one fifth of America’s 250 million vehicles. That’s because gas-guzzlers stay on the road much longer than you think. So why don’t we upgrade them to plug in?

A “Big Fix” to do just that could create many local jobs and make and save lots of money. With Intel co-founder Andy Grove and others, I’m promoting the idea of converting most of our large gas guzzlers to run partly or entirely on electricity. We’re already retrofitting homes, offices and factories. We can extend the lives of our pickups, SUVS, vans, and buses. And by replacing gallons with kilowatts, we’ll spend only a quarter as much per mile to drive them.

Federal and state governments are already paying tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle to companies that convert trucks to run on natural gas. Unfortunately, that doesn’t get us off fossil fuels. Natural gas cuts CO2 by a measly 30%. But every vehicle we retrofit to run on electricity will get cleaner as it gets older, because its power will come from increasingly low-carbon sources — including all that West Texas wind.

In 2011, new companies will surprise us with technical solutions and business models for a giant, new U.S.-led global industry. They’ll show how to convert almost anything except long-haul trucks. In a few years, as batteries get cheaper, and we can put lightweight motors right inside wheels, many of today’s small cars can also become affordable, safe, all-electrics or plug-in hybrids. And they might use battery separators invented by Exxon Mobil.

I’m a big fan when the oil industry zeroes in on the smartest, best uses for its products. I love it when hydrocarbons are locked up in plastic for consumer products, synthetic fibers and building materials. I hope oil technologies and rigs are soon used globally for lots more geothermal drilling . I cheer when Chevron invests in a startup that sells aviation biofuel from algae to the U.S. Navy. That’s 21st century leadership, inspiring the entire industry to go beyond petroleum.

I’d like to see the industry sponsor a successor to the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize focused on retrofit solutions. I invite a born-again oil industry to accelerate its rebirth by forging a bipartisan consensus to put a price on carbon emissions. And I’d welcome any oil companies announcements that they are not joining Valero, Tessoro and the Koch brothers in funding efforts to kill California’s pioneering legislation on global warming.

The industry can jump on many huge business and job creation opportunity. Take agriculture. Rather than continuing to pump up hundreds of ocean dead zones with runoff, and watch as others capture their customers, oil companies can invest in better solutions. The industry can look at biochar — an emerging no-side-effects geoengineering and soil enrichment technology. It can invest in smarter substitutes for petroleum-derived pesticides. That’s scalable since low-carbon farming techniques yield larger harvests than today’s global average. The icing on the cake? Biochar and organic farming could capture half the world’s greenhouse gases!

In 2050, I’d like to see my grandchildren run around a Houston Ship Channel full of yacht marinas and dune buggy trails. I’d watch them gulp fresh air as they take up my new favorite sport, stand-up paddle boarding, on its clean, still waters. And I’d love to hear what crazy new challenge they dream up as they gaze at the big Texas sky.